Dupont Corian showcases its collection of new colorways by appealing to all five senses

The team from A Razor, A Shiny Knife wows guests by focusing on service, decor, lighting and more to illustrate three color trends, presented by Mark Woodman of London-based Global Color Research.
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The team from A Razor, A Shiny Knife wows guests by focusing on service, decor, lighting and more to illustrate three color trends, presented by Mark Woodman of London-based Global Color Research.
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Co-founder of A Razor, A Shiny Knife, Michael Ciriano used dramatic effects to set the stage for the dark, austere nature of the Solidify color trend. Photography Courtesy of DuPont Building Innovations
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Attention event planners: Your colleagues are stepping up their game, and those regular ‘ol run-of-the-mill cocktail parties are not going to cut it anymore.

Trust me—we know it’s no easy task to drum up enough excitement for yet another chair or wallcovering or carpet introduction, or to get us editor-folk up out of our chairs and unchained from our computers. But Ogilvy Public Relations and Dupont Corian hit the ball out of the park with their recent Corian color launch in January, treating their New York-area attendees to something more than the usual trends talk.

In order to introduce the nine newest colors of the Corian® collection and the three of Zodiaq®, they decided to enlist the help of A Razor, A Shiny Knife—a group known for creating unique educational, social and theatrical culinary experiences.

Co-founder Michael Ciriano and his team appealed to all five senses in order to make a definitive impression on guests through their illustration of the three trends the new colors were born from: Raw, Interference and Solidify. These color trends were identified and presented on behalf of DuPont Building Innovations, makers of Corian®, by Mark Woodman of London-based Global Color Research.

“We do culinary performance art,” says Ciriano. “We started producing these very elaborate experiences that involve the food on the plate, but also the service, the decor, the room, the performance around those things, and then subsequently, the idea of how to make those ephemeral experiences
scalable. And we do that through the press, through photography, through story-telling, through video, through sculpture, through all these different mediums.”

Throughout the morning, as Woodman ran through each of the trends and explained their origins
and composition, Ciriano and his team would change out the table decor, the presenters’ attire, and of course, the food, leaving guests with a better impression of what these trends were built upon by appealing to all the senses, instead of just one.

“It’s the way we learn as humans,” explains Elizabeth Lawson, strategic project manager, DuPont Building Innovations—Surfaces.

Raw is comprised of fresh hues with organic yet polished effects, blended to celebrate the natural world and emulate plant materials as well as other natural fibers that are encased in transparency. Interference explores the lure of semi-precious stones, combining it with some sparkle and glamour. Bronze is a key shade here as well, as are tints of raw sienna and terra cotta. The final trend, Solidify, was inspired by global climate changes and features crystallized and frosted solids.

“We took the constraint of the space and the way we prepare and serve the food, then looked at each of the color trends and the language and art within them, then started looking at ways of expressing them through first the cuisine, and then the decor, and then the performance around the decor,” Ciriano explains.

For the Solidify trend, the team decided to serve a cold fish, devoid of color, to represent it. “It felt very cold and drained,” he says. He wanted there to be ice crystallizing on the outside of the bowls, black salt to use for taste, with very dark, inky blues and grays ruling dominating this part of the presentation. “All these things formed my vision of what world that color (trend) would want to live in.”

Guests left with a well-rounded impression of where the new colors came from, but also what direction surfaces will be taking in the coming months.